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Abstract

A critical necessity to achieve international standards in public health and sustainable development is to monitor the quality of the limited groundwater resources. To provide a basis for any sort of environmental investigations, the SaDIN project creates a knowledge pool in the centre of the Chouaïb Doukkali University, El Jadida (Morocco), in collaboration with the Data Centre of the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (Germany). SaDIN comprises tools for data acquisition, sample collection and multidisciplinary analysis with a long-term storage database. It addresses fundamental scientific, environmental and anthropological problems of national importance and social relevance. The aim is a regional real-time geoinformation system with worldwide access via Internet and interdisciplinary dynamic content enabling the communication between scientists, technicians and policy makers. The scientific objectives of this project focuses on the evaluation of the potential of aquifers in the region and their pollution caused by the pumping of groundwater. Attention will be paid to the subterranean infiltration of salt water from the sea into aquifers, which supply an arid, yet increasingly densely populated area. These investigations are accompanied by an epidemiological study on the health situation of the local population, which would be seriously affected by groundwater pollution. Another main focus is based on environmental parameters, such as wildlife, vegetation and illegal waste dumps. The knowledge gained in this project will be a source for technology transfer and policy decisions. It is a pilot project, which could serve as an example for similar projects in other regions of northern Africa and beyond. SaDIN will start in January 2004. Further informations of this project are already available in the Internet (www.sadin.org).